thiis thing dies on me really quick, at home not as bad when I'm on wifi, but i left this morning from my house, and by the time I got to work 45 minutes later i'm at like 90% and i've done nothing on the phone, not a thing, no text, no voice calls. time without signal is 0.
then of course I get to work and time without signal jumps to like 22%, but still, my blackberry didn't go dead in half a day. i'm running the mixup undervolted kernal and the epic experience rom.
I do run gps and normal phone settings but turning them off is really not an option, especially for my wife that just needs a phone that works and isn't dead before she is out of work, and she doesn't even use the phone.
am I doing something wrong or is the battery life really this crappy?
and it was worse before the new kernal on DI18, and way worse before that.
i use the same set up i got 10 hours under pretty use
try turning gps off at work
So what are you leaving on? 4g? Gps? WiFi? I found that using black wallpaper helps.
wifi and gps are always on, it seems its TWS that is killing it. at like 22% right now. battery is down to 83% right now 2 hours off charger. no voice calls or text calls.
If you are getting a tws of 50% then put your phone into airplane mode for about 10 seconds and then switch it back, you will see a dramatic decease in tws
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Here's a few things you can do ...
1) If you have Sprint service in most places, turn off roaming (Settings, Call settings, System select, Sprint). This will disable roaming period so that all roaming services are disabled (i.e. you won't ever see the data roaming guard).
2) Download JuiceDefender beta (this turns off all data, i.e. Wifi / 3G, whenever your phone's screen is off, if you purchase UltimateJuice with it, you can schedule it however you want, and you can choose to allow some apps to always allow data to go through). This saves me a LOT of battery since my screen is usually off.
3) Try the TWS hack mentioned in the earlier post, it should be fixed in DI18, but some people are still seeing high numbers there.
4) If you're rooted, get an app like Autostarts and disable the DRM service from ever running. This was found to be a battery killer.
The biggest battery drainer of them all is the GPS, and then 3G. If you can minimize your uses with those, you will maximize battery life. Also, use Wifi in areas that have it because Wifi hardly drains battery at all compared to 3G. I haven't seen any kernel really that gets much more battery life than stock, so doing these things will help. I love the Epic, but the battery life is a real downer for me too. I've gotten a full day's use (medium use) at times, while some days it hardly lasts at all.
Yes do the airplane mode trick and turn off gps if you are not using it and DO NOT USE JUICE DEFENDER i get 45 hours battery life without it. that app runs constantly in the background and uses more battery. Juice defender is for lazy people that dont know how to find these data and sync settings that are already on the phone or you can download an app that will let you toggle whatever setting you need. Set emails to sync once an hour and if it is really a priority then go into the email account and push refresh.
If you are really getting 45 hours of battery while actually using your phone then will you please share all of the settings that you have that give you this kind of battery life
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Use SetCPU, it will turn down the processor while the screen is off. Helped alot with battery life. =)
itsmebryan said:
I found that using black wallpaper helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wondered if that would do anything. Considering how AMOLED works, dark themes and wallpapers *should* help battery life similar to reducing brightness.
Auto-Sync does some mean damage if your settings are too frequent, too. Try not to use Facebook/Twitter/Myspace integration, if possible, or disable them from syncing automatically, and sync them yourself when you feel the need.
Okay I don't know exactly what I did/didn't do but my battery problem seems to be greatly improved. Lets start with my details. Before 2 days ago. No matter what my use my battery drain would be approx 6-8% an hour. If I took my phone off the charger at 11am by 4pm I would be around 60%. GPS/4g/wifi off. Screen brightness set to lowest. tws not too bad. Using both the tws trick and drm stopped. Usually 2 or 3 phone calls 5-10 texts 5-10 minutes of browsing. I had a task killer installed but never used it to kill tasks just as an app switcher. Even after the di18 update no major difference. So the other day I downloaded an app called system panel. Another task manager. I deleted the task killer widget on my home page but no the app. The first day I took my phone off the charger used it for about an hour then put it back on the charger for about 15 minutes. When I took it off the charger it was at 96%. I opened system panel and killed all apps (necessary services/apps restarted immediately) did tws trick and drm kill. Same use as always after 8 hours my battery was at 80% a 16% drop. That's 2% an hour. The next day I deleted my task killer and over the same period of time I went from 96% to 83% (13% lose over 8 hrs) Only a little over 1% lose an hour. The only difference that I am aware of was the deletion of the task killer widget and then the app completely.
Sh0wNuF said:
If you are really getting 45 hours of battery while actually using your phone then will you please share all of the settings that you have that give you this kind of battery life
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ditto, I'd like to hear what you're doing too ... even when I do not TOUCH the phone, I cannot get 45 hours. I think you're being a bit optimistic here.
Lmao No. Since di18 it has been great. I use my phone for a lot of stuff too. I have a live wall paper and rss feeds that update. email is set to once an hour. Now dont get me wrong if i play a game then it will suck my battery pretty good like 5% for ten minutes. i have a widget for sync settings. im rooted with ALL SPRINT apps removed i think thats the biggest thing. dont leave gps or other on if you are not using it. i do not have drm removed. i use full brightness. i talk a few times a day and dozens of text and web surfing. no juice defender or task killers. The object for me was to not have any unneccessary stuff run when it doesnt need to. so the phone is set to come alive when the screen is on not off. Check ALL APP and WIDGET SETTINGS FOR HOW OFTEN THEY UPDATE. I DO MEAN ALL. GO THROUGH EVERY APP AND CHECK THEIR SETTINGS ALSO the biggest drain is make sure you sign out gtalk or it will just constantly run. I shoulda posted my screen shot of battery life earlier sorry i will as soon as it reads 1d21h again. prolly tomorrow afternoon.... Rooted,cwm,galaxy rom and kernel, blue minimalism theme
jbadboy2007 said:
Yes do the airplane mode trick and turn off gps if you are not using it and DO NOT USE JUICE DEFENDER i get 45 hours battery life without it. that app runs constantly in the background and uses more battery. Juice defender is for lazy people that dont know how to find these data and sync settings that are already on the phone or you can download an app that will let you toggle whatever setting you need. Set emails to sync once an hour and if it is really a priority then go into the email account and push refresh.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i do the airplane trick, problem is it seems,when im on wifi, the life is great, battery is perfect, as soon as you go to 3g, it goes to crap, plus the service where I work is spotty as well. I don't know what to do, seriously I can't go through 2 years of great cell service that I can't use because the battery is dead. I mean if I could get through 10 hours it wouldn't be bad, but as it is now, i'm lucky to squeak through about 8 hours. and I have the mixup kernal that is undervolted and supposedly already messing around with the cpu. usually on 3g, no matter where I am pretty much I"m at like 10-20% TWS.
tws is 50% for me. just stop the data with sync settings then it has no reason to draw more. my house and school have terrible service. you are only losing battery life due to data that is going really slow and it takes way more battery to accomplish. i keep wifi on all nite at my house but my sync settings are off. i do this so its not searching for 3g because i have an airrave and wifi. i used the di07 mixup and was not happy with it. galaxy roms have been the least buggy and very stable with the best battery life. That might be my opinion but also genius dog doesnt have an epic yet so i cant trust his stuff when he cant see the impacts with the kernels he is making. but he does know code i will tell you that.
robl45 said:
i do the airplane trick, problem is it seems,when im on wifi, the life is great, battery is perfect, as soon as you go to 3g, it goes to crap, plus the service where I work is spotty as well. I don't know what to do, seriously I can't go through 2 years of great cell service that I can't use because the battery is dead. I mean if I could get through 10 hours it wouldn't be bad, but as it is now, i'm lucky to squeak through about 8 hours. and I have the mixup kernal that is undervolted and supposedly already messing around with the cpu. usually on 3g, no matter where I am pretty much I"m at like 10-20% TWS.
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Click to collapse
Holy crap 8 hour battery life is really bad.
Do you have any apps syncing? A weak signal with an app syncing can have a devastating effect on the battery life.
In my school building I get 0-1 signal bars and once I use the stock email app to sync my email every hour with 3G on my battery life is probably a third as good.
How?
jbadboy2007 said:
Yes do the airplane mode trick and turn off gps if you are not using it and DO NOT USE JUICE DEFENDER i get 45 hours battery life without it. that app runs constantly in the background and uses more battery. Juice defender is for lazy people that dont know how to find these data and sync settings that are already on the phone or you can download an app that will let you toggle whatever setting you need. Set emails to sync once an hour and if it is really a priority then go into the email account and push refresh.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sent from my epic 4g with no 4g
only thing syncing is gmail, I refuse to stop syncing my email, otherwise whats the point of the phone? my blackberry could do push no problem, the iphone could do push no problem.
akei1 said:
Holy crap 8 hour battery life is really bad.
Do you have any apps syncing? A weak signal with an app syncing can have a devastating effect on the battery life.
In my school building I get 0-1 signal bars and once I use the stock email app to sync my email every hour with 3G on my battery life is probably a third as good.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
robl45 said:
only thing syncing is gmail, I refuse to stop syncing my email, otherwise whats the point of the phone? my blackberry could do push no problem, the iphone could do push no problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Inside my building where I get a weak signal I turn off 3G and use the wifi to sync my apps regularly. I get a good wifi signal there.
If I can't get a good 3G signal in the building than there's not much I can do to my phone to make the 3G signal better (I think that's the cause for the battery drain).
Related
Is this normal? A total of 5 hours of talk time on EDGE network?
Do I have a defective battery?
I already optimized my phone to have the best battery life possible too.
depends...it could be that your phone was switching between edge and 3g which takes a lot of power drain. Or you had an app running in the background. If nothing else was draining power then i would say something is definitely up. Also are you sure it was fully charged when the call began?
The phone will not constantly switch between 3G and 2G during a call. If it's going to switch, it'll only happen once, from 3G to 2G. It doesn't go back up to 3G once it's on 2G during a call.
At least the battery icon is optimistic and makes you believe there's 75% left!
I've 3g off all together. Only application running was defender. Only thing else that was on was wifi.
I will return this phone if my new battery doesn't function better.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Wi-fi did it. After 2 hrs of voice calling you'd only have about 65% battery left anyway. The device will in THERORY get 6.5hrs of use on a call in PERFECT conditions. But realistically it'll probably be closer to 5.5-6. So after almost 2 hrs you'd be down to about 65% and wi-fi eats battery on any device unless you have it set to automatically turn off if it's not being used after x amount of time. That 55% is actually about right for any smart phone
lp894 said:
Wi-fi did it. After 2 hrs of voice calling you'd only have about 65% battery left anyway. The device will in THERORY get 6.5hrs of use on a call in PERFECT conditions. But realistically it'll probably be closer to 5.5-6. So after almost 2 hrs you'd be down to about 65% and wi-fi eats battery on any device unless you have it set to automatically turn off if it's not being used after x amount of time. That 55% is actually about right for any smart phone
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is it worth downloading Ultimate Juice pro or whatever to disable my wifi when Im not using it? Or what should I do?
if youd on't mind disabling and enabling manually, on your pull down menu(when u pull down the notification bar) there are 4 buttons there, wi-fi, bluetooth, gps, and silent. You can just tap on wi-fi to enable/disable it. you can also add the power control widget(which comes standard with the vibrant) just long press on an empty area of your homescreen, go to widgets, and select power control...you can contol it from there
if it makes you feel better, I use about 50% in 8 hours with just moderate use. Not much txting/calling. But I have sync constantly going. you may want to try setting your syncs to sync 1/day if you can get away with it(ie gmail contacts, fb contacts, etc, those don't usually need to be synced more than 1/wk usually so 1/day will save amazingly on your battery life)
I've been keeping a close eye on my battery. Just this morning my battery lost 40% in 5 hours while doing nothing. Its on a strong 3g connection with gmail sync on including an hourly facebook sync. I do not have task killers, other background data hogging programs, or constantly running power saving programs either.
I have confirmed that the"no led"app that gives you an on screen notification of messages uses way more power than people think. Even though the pixels are black, the module controlling the screen must be using up power or something.
I have adjusted my sync intervals so I'll see how it goes from here.
Sent from my powerful SGH-T959 using XDA App
lp894 said:
if youd on't mind disabling and enabling manually, on your pull down menu(when u pull down the notification bar) there are 4 buttons there, wi-fi, bluetooth, gps, and silent. You can just tap on wi-fi to enable/disable it. you can also add the power control widget(which comes standard with the vibrant) just long press on an empty area of your homescreen, go to widgets, and select power control...you can contol it from there
if it makes you feel better, I use about 50% in 8 hours with just moderate use. Not much txting/calling. But I have sync constantly going. you may want to try setting your syncs to sync 1/day if you can get away with it(ie gmail contacts, fb contacts, etc, those don't usually need to be synced more than 1/wk usually so 1/day will save amazingly on your battery life)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have no syncing going on, my phone on the lowest brightness and I still get worse battery life. lol
How do you change your sync intervals? I see no option for it in the accounts and sync section of settings.
advil0 said:
How do you change your sync intervals? I see no option for it in the accounts and sync section of settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
beat me to it, I would like to know this as well.
shznit said:
beat me to it, I would like to know this as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hit your contacts, more, then accounts.
My battery has to be defective. Phonearena.com says our phone has superb battery life. Lasting 1/4 or 1/3 of the day is not superb, in anyone's standards for a cellphone. Smart phone or not.
Mark271 said:
Hit your contacts, more, then accounts.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This doesn't let you change intervals. Its exactly the same as Settings > Accounts and Sync.
advil0 said:
This doesn't let you change intervals. Its exactly the same as Settings > Accounts and Sync.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, I do not know how to do that. I just turned it off all together.
Ya after turning sync off my battery actually got worse. I'm down to 9% at 541pm and it was pulled off charger at 7am. I have not been doing anything on my phone at all. This battery life is absolutely terrible on this phone. Some report great battery life which I don't understand. My g1 would last 2 days easy with the same amount of use.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Autostarts and SetCpu really helped me. Running unplugged for almost 36 hrs and still 6% charge left.
shznit said:
Autostarts and SetCpu really helped me. Running unplugged for almost 36 hrs and still 6% charge left.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did I have the same problem as me before using those applications? My phone is not rooted as I still might return it. So as of right now those applications are but accessible to me.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Mark271 said:
Did I have the same problem as me before using those applications? My phone is not rooted as I still might return it. So as of right now those applications are but accessible to me.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just trying to help. You can always unroot/flash back to factory.
edit:
I may have misunderstood you. Yes my battery life was pretty bad compared to iPhone 3gs on Tmobile (edge only). They way I see it is, if you keep the phone you will root it, how will you ever know what actually owning the phone will be like if you don't try now? Btw, I keep the screen on minimum brightness indoors and have 3g disabled 90% of the time.
I'm fortunate enough to have a device with a battery that works fine. Mine lasts about 12-13 hours a day. Syncing 4 accounts all day
Sent from my awesome Vibrant using XDA App
at work today i guess i had a bad signal and i noticed i lost over 20% in less than 8 hours. whats the cause of this and is there a fix? i also notice the phone runs like **** on a low signal, very sluggish even when overclocked.
More power is bein pumped into the radio to keep the signal strong(er). Airplane mode is your friend. As for being slow, I don't know why but I also experience slowness in low-signal areas.
abcdfv said:
More power is bein pumped into the radio to keep the signal strong(er). Airplane mode is your friend. As for being slow, I don't know why but I also experience slowness in low-signal areas.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
must be an android thing because i never had this happen with winmo or my palm pre.
Turn off 'Background Syncing' in Accounts & Sync settings. That will greatly improve both your battery life and phone slowness in low-signal areas. I have terrible signal in my work building too (would almost completely drain my battery in an 8-hour day), and ever since I started turning off Background Sync while at work, my phone only drops to around 50% in a work day.
I really think it's more the syncing that sucks the battery down in low-signal areas, not the radio having to broadcast stronger.
I have bad signal strength at my house. I also have a Airave to make up for this however since it does not provide 3g my battery will drop like mad when I am home.
The fix for this in my case is to turn off my mobile network when I get home that way I can still receive calls and texts but it basically tells the phone to quit looking for 3g signal and sticks to just the basics.
I then use my wifi while at home to get on the market or have my gmail and other apps sync with the phone.
Hope that helps you out and you find a solution that works for you.
I noticed MUCH moreso on CM6 vs. Fresh 2.3.3 what a significantly negative impact having background data enabled in a low signal area can have on the phone. My workplace is a consistently terrible cell area and since switching to CM6, I have been not only plagued with terrible battery life (like 10-15% per hour with minimal usage!), but the phone was running like absolute poo.
Today I checked to be sure and to my surprise, background data WAS enabled! I promptly turned that off and the phone returned to it's former CM6 glory and battery life returned to non-workplace goodness.
I have a bad signal at work, so I force it to roaming. It saves my battery and my phone is more reliable. Just be careful not to use too many minutes or too much data.
MrGreg said:
I have a bad signal at work, so I force it to roaming. It saves my battery and my phone is more reliable. Just be careful not to use too many minutes or too much data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How do you set it to roam? Is this a setting or is there a code i can type in whenever I want it to only look to roam, then another when i want it to go back to regular, or even if i only want it to look for 1X or only look for 3G? One of the client sites i regularly travel to has great roaming 1X speeds once i can get it to switch to that but it must also have a weak roaming 3g tower somewhere because its always on 3g with one to zero bars.
I'm on Fresh though i'm apparently going to have to look into CM6 in the near future. I love this place.
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App
ncadden said:
How do you set it to roam? Is this a setting or is there a code i can type in whenever I want it to only look to roam, then another when i want it to go back to regular, or even if i only want it to look for 1X or only look for 3G? One of the client sites i regularly travel to has great roaming 1X speeds once i can get it to switch to that but it must also have a weak roaming 3g tower somewhere because its always on 3g with one to zero bars.
I'm on Fresh though i'm apparently going to have to look into CM6 in the near future. I love this place.
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You have a few options...
1. You are running Fresh on your Hero? Use the modded phone.apk from here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=745092
2. Use the PRL hack...you'll have to search for it, although I think the link is in the thread that I linked above
3. Download the app "Roam Control". Disclaimer, I am the dev, and yes it costs money.
4. Flash CM6.
Just recently stumbled upon an app called shutupbattery saver
It automatically kills your data when signal is low. You tell it what signal strength turns it off. Does wonders
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App
markus_del_marko said:
must be an android thing because i never had this happen with winmo or my palm pre.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No..not really. I had several TP2 windoze phones since May of this year and went back to my Hero. The battery life on the RC1 build when you follow what has been said here,will give you way more life than any of the phones I have ever had.I was lucky to see 4 hours of life even with little usage with the TP2's. While my CDMA Hero does drop to 80% with everything turned on in 7 hours,it slows down considerably after that. Just with mild web crawling and 20 minutes of talk time it took well over 60 hours to drain completely last weekend after resetting the battery stats on mine with everything turned off. I actually had to use it non stop for 4 hours to drain the thing so it would shut off and be drained. Any phone I have ever owned has always done better after letting them drain completely and then charging them to 100% a few times. We have 4 of them in our home,and mine last longer than any of the others..the other 3 are stock 2.1.6 roms.
Mac
Why are people complaining about losing a measly, small 20 percent of battery in 8 hours? I'd understand if it was 35 percent or more, but seriously? you're complaining becuase your battery can last 40 hours? Wow...
CM6 RC1 with collin_ph battery tweak rules the world.
what i do to save my battery i change the settings on my advance task killer Menu>settings>Auto kill level(crazy)then also change Auto kill frequency(when screen off) and that really seems to help me
You could also look in to JuiceDefender. It shuts off 3g when screen is locked, turns it back on for either 1 min every 15 mins or 2 mins every 30 to sync.
jerry43812 said:
Why are people complaining about losing a measly, small 20 percent of battery in 8 hours? I'd understand if it was 35 percent or more, but seriously? you're complaining becuase your battery can last 40 hours? Wow...
CM6 RC1 with collin_ph battery tweak rules the world.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not everyone runs the froyo rom. at least i won't until a sense port comes out. and yes when the phone has a low signal it runs like absolute ****.
I'm having this problem also on CM6. Unplugged my phone this morning, full charge. Went to the gym at 11:30 and worked out for an hour and a half. There is no signal in my gym. The phone was completely dead when I got back to my desk. So basically the 80% battery drained in 1.5 hours (assuming I lost 20% between 7am and 11:30 when I went to the gym) It was not nearly this bad on the stock ROM. I just insggtalled collin_ph but I doubt that will help in this scenario. I might just have to remember to put it in airplane mode before going to the gym.
My bigger worry is when I'm out riding my road bike in the country. If I'm in the middle of nowhere, the battery will drain FAST... and thats the place I'll likely need to call someone in an emergency.
In my opinion there are key steps to insure a good battery life I perform this process every time I turn my phone on for daily use
First in settings/wireless/mobile networks I turn off data also roam and I change the signal to home only then in account and sync I turn off automatic sync and back ground data also i make sure that wireless is off as well then I turn my attention to applications and I clear data and force close any running program I'm not using for example gmail e mail browser Google search blue tooth I only force close apks that I know wont affect the system and how it runs also I should mention that this is done after I had calibrated my battery also I in spare parts I choose to make my end button put my phone to sleep these two steps are only done once now back to the process I run the over clock widget with dead3nce 9/14 stable kernel but also with every stable release he has put out I set the feq to 710 Max and 710 min and diff feq when screen off with 384 Max and 245 min this setup gives me high performance and long battery life I get 14 plus hrs with heavy use before ill hit 50% so u can imagine with moderate use will b or even standby time so I basically kill my phone if I'm not using it its in what I think is its lowest power state that I can get it at but its still on and ready so wen Im ready to use it I activate it and turn on what I need when I'm done I kill it again short of turning it off just thought I put this out in case it helps also I'm running cm6 rc1 and the 8/22 nightly I switch back and forth because of themes but the process is the same and so are my results so hope this helps good luck
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App
It's 3G. Turn off your Mobile data when you going to be in an area with a bad signal for a long time.
As someone else said the collin_ph battery tweak works wonders too.
How do ya do it?
at most ive gotten bout 20
MINIMAL use (I.e. no browser).
Yes, anyone getting that much battery is running minimal services with < 10% wake time.
I usually get about 14 hours.
I keep my brightness on auto,
surf the web randomly,
I don't turn off auto-sync,
I watch videos, stream Pandora to my car stereo over Bluetooth,
sync 2 email accounts,
send and receive about 20 texts a day,
my facebook and twitter widgets sync once an hour and sometimes I manually sync them in between,
my Tech-Buzz widget syncs once an hour,
Beautiful Widgets syncs once an hour,
I use whatever wallpaper I feel like using on any particular day(some people think black saves power),
On some days I use Navigation and that knocks my usage back by an hour or two if I don't plug it into the car charger while using it.
I refuse to cripple my phones capabilities, or sit it down all day just so I can say I get 30 hours of battery time. If I need more than 12-18 hours, I have 3 spare batteries ready to go.
Disclaimer: DI8 has really reduced my battery life, however I still can get 2 days if I stretch it, and am *always* at around 70% at the end of a normal day. On my last charge before DI8 I was still at around 50% after 36 hours, with normal use.
What I do:
* Wi-fi always on, never sleep
* 4G off unless I know I'm in a 4G area, then on (it stays off anyway if I've got wi-fi)
* GPS off
* DRM and all other non-essential services off
* Screen brightness 1 or 2 ticks above minimum
* Kill only apps that I know are hogs (Google Nav, for example), leave all others alone to do what they want, use ATK as little as possible
* Airplane mode workaround for TWS
I also just don't use a lot of apps that I know are going to potentially prevent the phone from sleeping or otherwise hog up the battery if they happen to start up in the background randomly. I just don't have apps like that. Some people install all sorts of weird crap on their phones that does god knows what, I generally will only install stuff where I know exactly what it does. I also don't run a lot of widgets that check stuff in the background, although I do run Twitter and Facebook.
I am sure I don't use my phone as much as some people here, but it's wrong to assume people who get good battery life just don't use their phones. I make no real attempt at not using my phone; I use it whenever I want. That includes making calls, browsing the web (with one of three browsers), sending text messages or writing emails, using navigation in my car, and playing games.
Of all the things I do with my phone, the only thing I've noticed really super-killing my battery is GPS and navigation. That burns the battery at a rate of about 20% per half hour, which is about as long as I normally use it. But even if I use the GPS for an hour in a day, I can still get about 24 hours out of the battery if I need to.
I'm convinced wi-fi still really helps, and I'm set up so that *most* of the time I have wi-fi. I have wi-fi at home, at work, and actually on most of my route to and from work (my cable company has free wi-fi if you're a cable subscriber). I don't know how good my battery life would be if I didn't have that.
I use to get 20-25 hours easy, now I'm lucky to get maybe 8-10
daazncandyman said:
I use to get 20-25 hours easy, now I'm lucky to get maybe 8-10
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here. Using stock DI18, rooted, mixup kernel with ondemand setcpu and juice defender (it was 5 hours b4 juice dfender installed.
Turned off the DRM service, automatic brightness. That's it. Stock everything else!
I've got GV and talk always on.
I"m a light user; sent 50+ text messages, occasionally check my email, and push email every hour.
At 40% battery life I have 2 days of battery life.
In the background I have
5 essential stock services running
digital clock wdiget
voicemail
email app
switchpro widget
My running time is 5.5% (lol), with display on 2 hours (auto-brightness), 3G on 10 hours, wifi on for the remaining time (Wi-fi policy never sleep), and TWS 0% (airplane mode trick).
Also, if you run wifi make sure you set the sleep policy to never. I'm using the DI18 update and when I turned my phone on I saw the 3G icon in the notification bar when there should be the wifi icon. Setting the wifi sleep policy to never will stop the phone from using 3G when the screen is off. NOT fixed in the DI18 update.
Attached my wallpaper lol
what exactly does wifi never sleep do to save battery ? also I seen it mentioned on a dif site, set it up that way and when the phone went off it appeared the wifi did also .. idk need a lil insight on that whole setting
dumpringz said:
what exactly does wifi never sleep do to save battery ? also I seen it mentioned on a dif site, set it up that way and when the phone went off it appeared the wifi did also .. idk need a lil insight on that whole setting
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Normally, wi-fi uses a lot less battery life than 3G, so sometimes you want to use wi-fi and not 3G.
You set wi-fi sleep policy to "never," so that when you have wi-fi turned on and the phone goes to sleep, it won't turn off the wi-fi and turn on 3G. So the phone only uses wi-fi and "never" switches to 3G.
You have to manually change this in the advanced settings.
I don't know if it's something I downloaded which is eating my battery. I guess I'll try to do a hard reset, if that doesn't solve it, time to root
I can't get more than 8 hours on this..any suggestions to increase it?
I never get to 10 hours but I use my phone constantly. I on average use two batteries a day. I believe I should get the most out of my phone, I am paying the monthly fee, why restrict myself cause my phone will have a dead battery, I always carry a spare.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Coin Slot said:
I never get to 10 hours but I use my phone constantly. I on average use two batteries a day. I believe I should get the most out of my phone, I am paying the monthly fee, why restrict myself cause my phone will have a dead battery, I always carry a spare.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here, I got 2 batteries off of ebay so I use the hell out of my phone. Brightness is on max to show off that screen, stereo bluetooth and pandora,4g is always on, live wallpapers and browse internet and play games a lot (angry birds mostly) . Battery lasts me 7 to 8 hrs which is amazing based on how much I use it. If u are doing normal use and getting 8 hrs then something is wrong, ur maybe not in 4g and 4g is ona nd ur wasting batt looking for signal oor something else. Maybe u have a service running in the background. I removed media hub and drm bc I heard they run a lot, but I never did a proper b4 and after comparison so not sure if it actually does help. I'm using noobs andromeda rom and d18 update.
Sent from my Epic 4G
Id be SO happy if I could even get 6 hours off one charge.
I'm lucky to get more than 3hours these days from 100 to 15%. :\
I did have a lot of widgets, but I removed a majority of them. I NEVER have wifi, 4G, GPS or sync on. My brightness is always set to 0%.
I guess I just use the phone too much! I don't mind because I usually am able to get near a wall outlet to charge my phone in the middle of the day.
But I'm worried about tomorrow, where I'm leaving at 8am and not getting back till 6pm with NO ACCESS to any wall outlets. I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna make it. Lol.
posted from a EPIC4G.
I'm convinced that with regular use you are gonna get 8-10 hrs on a full charge. Hell by 8 hrs you are going need to start charging unless you want to wait until the phone dies so you can claim x amount of hours.
There is no point in turning off everything on your phone and barely using it to say it lasts 20 hrs. Get a charger for work, home and your car. It is what it is.
I wake up at 6am, charge by 2 pm when battery is around 30%.
the problem with this phone bottom line is that 3g is eating the battery life. I set wifi to always on and I'm always on wifi in the house. I can get 12-14 hours sitting in my house. whoopie doo. Thats not hte point of the phone, the point of the phone is to have mobile service, not wifi service. anyone that is getting 30 hours out of the phone is using wifi. So thats not even a fair comparison. I love the phone, but this is just stupid, I shouldn't have to carry a spare battery with me if I go to the daytona 500 from 9am to 9pm.
robl45 said:
the problem with this phone bottom line is that 3g is eating the battery life. I set wifi to always on and I'm always on wifi in the house. I can get 12-14 hours sitting in my house. whoopie doo. Thats not hte point of the phone, the point of the phone is to have mobile service, not wifi service. anyone that is getting 30 hours out of the phone is using wifi. So thats not even a fair comparison. I love the phone, but this is just stupid, I shouldn't have to carry a spare battery with me if I go to the daytona 500 from 9am to 9pm.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah 3G does eat more battery life than wi-fi but that doesn't mean you can't have great battery life with 3G on all the time. I can get 1-2 days with 3G on and with light use, but that's in part because I get a good 3G signal.
I probably emphasized too much on wi-fi but the point I'm trying to make is try to avoid using a weak connection. Generally, I use wi-fi/3g/4G in my home but inside most buildings they'll most likely have weak 3G and 4G connections, so I use the wi-fi network inside the building.
You said you could get 12-14 hours with wi-fi and not touching the phone? I'm not trying to be rude but that seems really low. If mines idle on wi-fi in my home it lasts days. With 14 hours idling, that means the battery life drops 7% every hour. Idling on wi-fi I think it should only drop 1-3% per hour.
Mind if you go to settings -> applications -> running services and post what you have?
i get twenty four hours on average a full day so to speak wake up it says fully charged i take it off check twitter and facebook leave the house and dont touch it until i am at school bored in class lol and then it says 95 after a full day of class it usually says 66 thats after 9 hours i go home play with it download apps etc make several calls and i text alot all day by the way and then i go to work and it says 50 or about 48 usually i use it all night off and on til i get home at seven my wife kills the battery and puts it on the charger while i sleep usually about 9
I've been seeing a lot of posts on crap battery life around here, and I was chasing my tail about some of them as well, following a lot of misinformation even by senior members. I think I have a good handle on it now, and picked up most of these tips from these forums, so I'm not taking credit for these ideas, just collecting them in one place. Some of my suggestions assume you have root and Rom Manager (see the Tips and Tricks sticky thread on how to get them).
1. If your battery drains in less than a day on standby, you probably have a bad flash of the JI6 modem (either from the OTA update or from a ROM). Flash the JI2 modem from here "www dot teamwhiskey dot com/home/downloads". If the flash fixes it, you may try going back to JI6 if you want, and it may stay fixed. I went back to JI2 and didn't bother going back to JI6, but it has worked for others. With JI2 and 3G on I get just over 24 hours in normal usage.
2. The #2 battery drain on standby is 3G. I turned it off (Settings/Wireless/Mobile networks/Network mode/GSM only) and my phone lasted for 40 hours on Edge with light usage (few phone calls, messaging, quite a lot of web surfing, 2 hours of podcasts). Didn't even feel too slow (I get 140kbps on edge). Can anybody suggest a really good widget for turning 3G on/off? I use the 2G-3G OnOff widget by Curvefish. It's not one-click, it's just a shortcut to Mobile Network Settings, but it works. Note that sometimes it takes a while for the data connection to re-establish after you see the 3G or E icon.
2.5. WiFi always on is a huge battery saver! It keeps 3g off. I can easily get 3+ days with light usage on my home wifi. Settings/Wireless and Network/Wifi Settings/Menu/Advanced/Wifi Sleep Policy/Never.
3. Don't need a task killer. I wasted all my time killing tasks trying to chase down my crappy battery usage, but since I fixed my modem and turned off 3G I know that the 3-5% CPU usage at idle does not hurt my battery. Taskiller for me was actually hitting the CPU constantly, lightly but for no reason, so I got pissed and uninstalled it.
4. Install a CPU usage monitor like Usage Timelines. It sits in the notification bar, very easy on the battery, but tells you if you have a rogue app pegging your CPU and draining your battery. These are the only apps you should be worried about killing. Astro File Manager has a task manager that shows CPU usage for each app, so you can kill the rogue one. I shoot for about 5% cpu usage at idle (at 200mhz - at 100mhz it would be a bit higher).
5. The app Autostarts lets you disable any app from starting on boot or other events like connectivity changes. This is not strictly necessary unless you have a lot of crap apps installed on your phone and they like to start themselves and waste CPU time behind your back.
6. If your battery reads less than 100% as soon as you unplug it from the charger fully charged, or your battery meter sits at 100% for a long time after you unplug it, you can recalibrate your battery meter. To recalibrate: 1) charge your battery to full, 2) unplug, 3) reboot into Clockwork Recovery and 4) Wipe battery stats.
7. There is No Such Thing as "battery reconditioning" (for all intents and purposes). The above procedure only RECALIBRATES you battery METER to read on a more linear scale between full and empty. It DOES NOT make your battery last longer, period. Whoever tells you that is a moron. If your battery is dying in 6 hours, doing any amount of calibration will not make it last longer (I've tried).
8. I wouldn't be too worried about undervolting, overclocking, kernel tricks and superawesomefast ROMS. The CPU drain at idle is so minuscule (as long as you don't have rogue apps) that those things make precious little difference. Like I said, the biggest drain is 3G and other radios. Having said that, I run Bionix 1.9 with the JAC kernel. It drained my battery in half a day at idle until I flashed the JI2 modem. With JI2 it suddenly started lasting over 24 hours, and once I turned off 3G, over 40 hours. I like this ROM and see no need to switch, it's very smooth. But you should be able to get similar battery life on a stock Vibrant.
9. I have GPS on, WiFi never sleep, auto-brightness, and a few widgets on like Weather and friend updates. I have no fancy settings, literally just turning off 3G (or wifi on, which is the same) got me 2-3 days. So I wouldn't waste time fooling around with magic settings (other than wifi never sleep), battery saver apps, etc.
10. If your screen is on all the time and you're playing games nonstop, you're draining your battery quicker than any of the things I mentioned above, so you probably don't care. In that case an optimized ROM/kernel is probably your best bet, especially JIT in Froyo. You can probably save on screen brightness as well.
If you guys have any other tips I'd be glad to add them to the list, but I hope this gives you an understanding of where your battery life is going. Basically: bad modem, 3G, or rogue apps.
Also, I hope this will put an end to trolls calling people whiners for complaining about battery life and saying unproductive **** like "you're a whiner" or "the Galaxy S is just a battery hog, live with it". It's not, you don't have to live with it, nobody should have to, here are your solutions.
Good luck.
A few things I do to help with battery life is:
Disable Audible touch tones
Disable Audible selection
Disable Haptic feedback
Disable SD card notifications
Set animations to NO animations
Uninstall media hub if you dont use it
Disable auto brightness adjustment
Disable power saving mode
I disable the last 2 and just swipe the notification bar to adjust brightness. Granted these items really only work when using the phone but I can go about 2 days of normal use without a charge believe it or not.
yeah disabling 3g has always been the best option for people really, really concerned with battery life.
But it's kinda hard to tell people not to use 3g on their brand new 3g capable devices.
You may want to add how to test if you battery is bad. If you use you phone repeatedly while it its plugged in you risk overheating and damaging your battery. Signs that unitas is the case are very quick drain and long (7 hours) charge times. You can easily test and see if your battery its damaged. Remove it from your phone and place on flat surface (e.g. Counter top) try spinning the battery. If it rotates easily and quickly you battery is bulging, this is a sign of damage. Time for a new battery.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Answer to #2-
Use APNDroid. Comes with a widget.
Thanks to the OP and other contributors in this thread.
I flashed a ROM with the ji6 modem and battery life has been noticeably ****ty since. Example - this morning I unplugged my phone at 7:30 am. 100% charged. It's 10:21 am and my phone is at 75%
In the last 3 hours I browsed the web for 10 minutes while having my coffee and a smoke before heading out to work. Blue tooth was on for my drive, and I've sent 2 text messages. Aside from that my phone has been on stand-by since I unplugged it 3 hours ago.
I'm going to try to flash back to ji2 tonight as the battery usage was definitely better. Will also look into the 3G thing.
Thanks again.
You forgot to mention the two DRM and one downloader services that run resident on JI6.
These were the cause of my reduced battery life after I upgraded. Killing & removing these processes restored my battery life back to normal
blink55184 said:
Answer to #2-
Use APNDroid. Comes with a widget.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just tried this - switching 3G off works fine, but switching 3G back on didn't work for me. I had to re-boot to get 3G back so this is a no-go in my case.
I know how to kill the processes for the DRM and downloader but how do I remove them?
OP thank you for putting together the list. But I've never seen the point of doing all this. Its like getting a lamborghini and only driving 40mph because it you don't want to waste gas, whats the point? Either get a second wall charger to charge at work or a car charger. Heck even get a second battery if you are out for a long period of time.
speoples20 said:
Its like getting a lamborghini and only driving 40mph because it you don't want to waste gas, whats the point?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't need to disable 3g.
The point of my post is to avoid people wasting their time with tweaks that have little to no effect on battery life. I'm telling people that they're wasting time killing apps and optimizing cpu usage and twiddling their settings when the radio drains most of their battery on standby anyway.
Meaning no matter what changes you make, you can only hope to improve your battery life by a tiny amount, because any other effect is overshadowed by 3G.
Put another way, you will NEVER get battery life much longer than a day if you're on 3g, so you're wasting your energy trying all kinds of tricks.
blink55184 said:
Answer to #2-
Use APNDroid. Comes with a widget.
smutek said:
I just tried this - switching 3G off works fine, but switching 3G back on didn't work for me. I had to re-boot to get 3G back so this is a no-go in my case.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me the widget did nothing. But it seems like it's not even supposed to turn the 3G radio off, but ALL APN network traffic. Did I miss something? It won't save battery power as long as the 3G radio is on.
I went back to the 2G-3G OnOff widget by Curvefish. It's not one-click, it's just a shortcut to Mobile Network Settings, but it works. Note that sometimes it takes a while for the data connection to re-establish after you see the 3G or E icon.
Back to my Moto Startac
While i understand the idea behind this thread, your conclusion is simple.
If you use the phone as a smartphone, it will eat up your battery no matter what.
I personally go through two batteries and some a day. (they cost about 12 bucks in ebay, and they work just fine)
The price for saving battery is not using the phone, and having a 400 bucks phone just for show off is just silly at least.
If you have a phone like this is to use it. At least you can change the battery not like some other devices......
I understand that task killer is useless, but do any of you use Autokiller (memory manager) ?
That's kind of a redundant question because even if you do not use the app, your phone is still performing the functions. The app just adjusts the settings. But to answer your question, using a memory optimization tool such as AutoKiller is 1000% more efficient than using a Task Killer. I don't think it effects battery much, but works wonders on performance.
There's no 3g-off widget because apparently in Android there's no way to do that through a direct command. I also use the Curvefish widget, and you are absolutely right about turning off 3g to save battery. I normally do so when I'm asleep or if I'm sitting at my desk next to a computer (why do I need fast data on my phone when I have my computer right here?).
The other thing I would recommend is AutoStarts. There are way too many apps that open themselves up at bizarre and inappropriate times. Autostarts is an easy and painless way to see which apps do this and keep them from opening.
gagb1967 said:
While i understand the idea behind this thread, your conclusion is simple.
If you use the phone as a smartphone, it will eat up your battery no matter what.
I personally go through two batteries and some a day. (they cost about 12 bucks in ebay, and they work just fine)
The price for saving battery is not using the phone, and having a 400 bucks phone just for show off is just silly at least.
If you have a phone like this is to use it. At least you can change the battery not like some other devices......
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1000
Great battery life comes to people who hardly use their phones. Guess I need to get a netbook. Will prolly get a netbook or 3g laptop + skype and ETF my phone soon. These battery woes are show-stopping.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Losing 4% an hour on standby when you're not using the phone is unacceptable. Samsung screwed something up with the JI6 update. Most people think it's because of the stupid Media Hub. I think they are right.
People are not complaining about the poor battery life from using the phone. They are complaining about the slow battery drain even when they are not using it. ~4% an hour adds up fast. Vibrant is supposed to have 450 hour (18 days) stand-by time. That's what is rated. But people are getting 24 hour (1 day) stand-by time after JI6.
Yellow C6 said:
Losing 4% an hour on standby when you're not using the phone is unacceptable. Samsung screwed something up with the JI6 update. Most people think it's because of the stupid Media Hub. I think they are right.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not ready to sign off on this idea. For me simply flashing JI2 over JI6 fixed it. For some people flashing JI6 back over still left the problem fixed. I still have those processes running on JI2 and my battery life is fine.
The other reason I'm not ready to recommend wiping out those DRM processes is that apparently it stops the bundled Avatar movie from playing, and might affect other things that users may get pissed about. I've read that killing the downloader process people are talking about kills the market. So I really wish those people advocating that solution would figure their **** out and provide exact steps for the fix (right now their posts are really vague like "kill the processes that are named something like this" and not well tested; in all my research I didn't find the exact name of the "downloader" process).
Is it possible to flash the ji2 modem without root? Wishful thinking, I suppose..
actually, i still dont understand how it works. days before, i keep.complaining the bad battery, it drops 15% after one night. i turned my wifi and 3g off, it didnt work. i opened a thread to complain about this, some friend advise me to use the juice defender which really help a lot. now it use only 3 to 4% for 8 hours standby, which is much much better than before. if u are also troubled by ur battery, give it a shot. it's free from the market.
my set: all enable except for the location.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
What does it shut off? Seems like it has to be something important to work. I want my email in real-time; does it mess with that?
I installed this only a few hours ago. yet to see any significant change. By the looks of it, having it on the default setting will turn data off when your screen is off, but I still get e-mail notifications in my 1hr check intervals even when my phone is sleeping.
AmesCell said:
What does it shut off? Seems like it has to be something important to work. I want my email in real-time; does it mess with that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The main feature is that it disables data most of the time (2g, 3G or wifi) and only enables it at preset intervals, like 2 minutes every 30 minutes to get your e-mails and stuff.
So basically what you lose is push / real time notifications.
It can also manage the screen brightness and CPU clock more precisely, put the phone in plane mode while you're sleeping (for example you can tell Juice defender to go in plane mode from 23:30 to 6:30 every day, except if you're still using your phone after 23:30 or start using it before 6:30), or activate wifi only when you're in a specific location.
Does anybody have issues receiving MMS picture messages with JD or any other power saving app running?
I had 'Green Power' running yesterday. A few people sent me pics which came through as blank. Stopped the app and asked them to resend and it worked.
Thanks
NC
I tried this app too, but the battery draining when WiFi was enabled was higher than without JuiceDefender. Still trying to get through all the JD settings...
I dont think Juice Defender would work well for me as I use Whats App a lot...
I use it on my ego. One of the best apps i bought
from my phone duh
Is anyone else able to toggle the 2G/3G setting? I've paid for the Ultimate Pack (wish i hadn't now as the Plus pack is supposed to do this) but apparently JD doesn't like my ROM, the Log says: 'ROM is not compatible with AOSP helper (3G control is unavailable) - get CyanogenMod
Out of interest i was on a UK O2 branded phone so i flashed XEU KW7, then rooted, then put back the original KE7 kernel. I wonder if that's the problem?
I was messing with Juice defender, but I found the app called Battery Booster to be much, much more effective. I went from a 12 hour battery, to having between 24 and 28 hours the last 3 charges. Simply amazing, more than doubled my battery life. Using perhaps 1-2% per hour when sleeping.
1-2% per hour when sleeping is not that good, i get 3% in 8 hours when sleeping.
But juice defender does what should be built into the gingerbread and that is, it puts your wifi and 3g to sleep when your screen is off or when you are not using it.
I personaly dont use push notifications so loosing that doesnt bother me, what bothers me is when the phone is in sleep it drains because i have wifi on.
I dont want to be turning wifi on and off all the time, i want it to be automatic, when i go on the web or open an app that uses data it should turn on my wifi.
SO YES JUICE DEFENDER DOES ROCK.
Well, before battery booster it used 5 - 8% per hour sleeping, so I'm pretty darn happy with the results I'm getting now. It used to last me about 12 hours. Now it lasts usually over 24 hours, which is great. That is included with 3-4 hours of screen-on time. Android OS also dropped by 20% after getting battery booster.
NIK516 said:
1-2% per hour when sleeping is not that good, i get 3% in 8 hours when sleeping.
But juice defender does what should be built into the gingerbread and that is, it puts your wifi and 3g to sleep when your screen is off or when you are not using it.
I personaly dont use push notifications so loosing that doesnt bother me, what bothers me is when the phone is in sleep it drains because i have wifi on.
I dont want to be turning wifi on and off all the time, i want it to be automatic, when i go on the web or open an app that uses data it should turn on my wifi.
SO YES JUICE DEFENDER DOES ROCK.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You do know there's a setting for turning of WiFi when screen is off, right?
Settings - WiFi - Advanced - Wifi Sleep Policy
rengift said:
actually, i still dont understand how it works. days before, i keep.complaining the bad battery, it drops 15% after one night. i turned my wifi and 3g off, it didnt work. i opened a thread to complain about this, some friend advise me to use the juice defender which really help a lot. now it use only 3 to 4% for 8 hours standby, which is much much better than before. if u are also troubled by ur battery, give it a shot. it's free from the market.
my set: all enable except for the location.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If u using juice defender ultimate will boost battery more
h
xiga said:
Out of interest i was on a UK O2 branded phone so i flashed XEU KW7, then rooted, then put back the original KE7 kernel. I wonder if that's the problem?
Unlikely but a factory reset often cures a problem .
jje
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
BoogWeed said:
I dont think Juice Defender would work well for me as I use Whats App a lot...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no problem at all with push services.
the way juice def works is simple: it geolocalizes ur wifi router, and moving out the area of wifi, jd switches off wifi hardware until u come back home\office. it does the same with other hardware modules not in use.
wot doesnt work: ebuddy or other istant massaging apps while screen is off (I think it's unuseful to use jd with IM-draining batt-apps)
NIK516 said:
1-2% per hour when sleeping is not that good, i get 3% in 8 hours when sleeping.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm, am I doing something wrong leaving my phone charging overnight? Will that kill my battery?
When do you guys charge the phone if not overnight?
Ayers976 said:
Hmm, am I doing something wrong leaving my phone charging overnight? Will that kill my battery?
When do you guys charge the phone if not overnight?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
24 hours in a day so i charge when it needs a charge 20% left or when i know i want extended use .
jje
I just installed Battery Booster. Juice Defender didn't do much for me but annoy me.
Now see how this app will hold itself.
Very similar to my finding with ATK (link below). Something happened in Gingerbread with how the OS handles cached apps... to the point where some cached apps stay active and keep your device awake!
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=14108166&postcount=1